Copyright & Use Policies

Thank you for your responsible and ethical use of the World Café name, logo, and materials.

The World Cafe was founded in alignment with the principles of the Gift Economy. Because of that, we’ve made our core material available to everyone without charge, with the vision that World Cafe principles and practices will be of global service.

We request the following agreements from the international community to support and align with our commitment to the Gift Economy:

1. Adherence to the Creative Commons Attribution4 License
2. Respect Individual Author Rights 
3. Ethical use of Name and Logo
4. Reciprocal contributions in support of the World Cafe Community Foundation are welcome

INTERNATIONAL CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION4 LICENSE
The World Café method and all the free resources, materials and information on the World Café website are made available to you under an International Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4 License. Creative Commons Licenses are used extensively throughout the world for groups and organizations dedicated to creating new social, legal, and economic models. 

Key conditions of this license are: 

You are free to :

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.

Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the Following Conditions:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit (acknowledge the World Cafe Community Foundation as the source of the World Cafe name and method, and include a link to the World Cafe website: https://www.theworldcafe.com), provide a link to the license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en), and indicate if any changes were made to the original material. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

INDIVIDUAL AUTHOR RIGHTS
There are World Café printed materials available for purchase in the World Café Store, Please respect the individual author’s rights where indicated. While you are welcome to post limited excerpts from these materials (with accreditation), we ask that you not share more than that. Monies from the sale of these materials is critical to meet our limited budget and we make very accommodating bulk or shared copy rates available for libraries, educational institutions, etc… Please contact us for details.

ETHICAL USE OF NAME & LOGO
The name “World Café” is trademarked in the US. But wherever you are, we ask that you not use it as part of your formal organizational name, product, or service, to avoid confusion between your offering and the World Café Community Foundation. Contact us if you want to talk about this further.

You are welcome to use the term “World Café” to describe individual hosting services or an event you are convening (e.g., “A Main Street USA World Café”) as long as you acknowledge the World Café Community Foundation as the source of the name and method by including a link to our website: https://theworldcafe.com.

We do not authorize any public use of our logo unless used specifically in conjunction with programs sponsored (or co-sponsored) by The World Café Community Foundation.

COMMERCIAL USE
If you make commercial use of hosting the World Café methodology, and while not required, we appreciate your making an appropriate donation to the World Café Community Foundation (see links to your left) in recognition of the value provided. As noted above, keep in mind that you cannot profit on the work of an individual author through sale or use of his/her copyrighted material without permission.

If you have derived value from the use of the World Café, whether commercially or not, we invite you to make a tax-deductible contribution to the World Café Community Foundation so we can continue to develop and freely disseminate World Café materials to the public.

Growing Through Friendship
We have always lived by the principle of growing through friendship, ever since the World Café was discovered 30 years ago. We welcome you into the circle of World Café friends, and invite you to stay connected, communicate your plans, and remain in ongoing relationship with us as we continue to evolve together.

Thank you.